Mom was a real “shutterbug,” and I’m glad she was; otherwise I wouldn’t have some of the really great pictures of so many places here in Kern County and elsewhere during the 30s and 40s. But one picture mom took in a Honolulu bar while she was in Hawaii is of some of her friends. There are three young sailors, and two young women shown hoisting their glasses toward mom as she was taking their picture. They are smiling and laughing, just really happy young people and the picture makes me believe mom and those other young people had found heaven on earth. Full of youth and the joy of life in a beautiful land; and no doubt all had their hopes and dreams that life would continue to be full of joy and promise. A few days after mom took the picture the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

In such a brief moment of time our lives can go from heaven on earth to being hell on earth. It may come from the death of a child or other loved one, it may come because of an accident or catastrophic illness or bombs falling, but once it has happened you find yourself realizing heaven is not to be found on earth. And for countless millions throughout the world life is nothing but hell on earth, countless millions seeming to be born to no other purpose but to suffer and die, and too often suffering and dying because of the decisions of tyrants and despots. Where is heaven for these countless millions?

“Lot a people talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t a’ goin’ there.” It’s a statement I first recall hearing as a child in our small church in Little Oklahoma, and the truth of it became increasingly clear to me the older I became. Eventually I would hear a goodly number of people talking about heaven who, in my opinion, certainly wouldn’t be going there, and I came to appreciate the comment by Huck Finn that if his friend Tom Sawyer wasn’t going to heaven he would prefer “that other place.” And I suppose Sam Clemens had met enough of those talkin’ ‘bout heaven he believed sure weren’t a’ goin’ there, but if they were he would certainly prefer “that other place.”

We hear a lot about faith, about “people of faith,” but in my experience there are few people that really know what the word actually means. A dictionary isn’t of much help when it comes to the Biblical definition of the word: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Those people of faith listed in Hebrews chapter eleven are said to have died in faith thereby confessing “that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” and desired “a better country, that is, an heavenly.”

Ah, there we have it. People of faith according to the Bible know this world is not their home; they are only passing through. And such people are to be distinguished by their lives of faith evidencing their hope is not in this world seen, but in a heavenly one unseen. And such people living by the Golden Rule evidencing their hope in a better world unseen only pitch a tent in this world, they don’t settle down in it. Such people are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

From the story in Genesis we get some idea of how the earth was blasted by sin and came to be groaning for its redemption, that until this happens and there are new heavens and a new earth “wherein dwelleth righteousness” Satan remains the god of this world. From the story in Genesis we get some idea of there being in fact “children of God” and “children of the Devil” as Jesus described later. So in addition to Nature red in tooth and claw, of having to contend with an earth bringing forth weeds to be overcome, there is Satan and his spawn to make sure the children of God are made to suffer.

We read a lot about love in the Bible. Jesus said to love God and your neighbor as yourself was “all the law and the prophets,” there is John 3:16 and that thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, the First Epistle of John, and we read God places such a premium on love that it “covers a multitude of sins.”

Even as a child I was troubled by this thing of loving God. How could someone possibly love God? I could understand believing in God, I could understand being afraid of God because of doing wrong, I could understand someone serving God, but I could not understand how anyone could actually love God, and I had doubts about many that said they loved God.

I’ve read the Bible through many times and it has been a lifelong study of mine. I know all that the Bible has to say on the subject of love. What eventually became clear to me about loving God is the love we have for others. It was those I loved that gradually taught me what loving God was really all about. Over the years as I lost loved ones and friends, they remained close to me because I continued to love them. They all had their own hopes and dreams, but these were never selfish hopes and dreams, they always included those they loved.

And so the question finally came to me; does God have his hopes and dreams? Now I don’t know if there is a God, or even gods and goddesses. But I believe in the love the Bible talks about, I believe in the love my departed loved ones and friends had for me and I had for them, my own love for them still continuing unabated. The thing is whatever their hopes and dreams, largely unfulfilled in this life, these required many sacrifices on their part in their attempts, sacrifices that were unselfish, sacrifices made by loving people for those like me that they loved.

So I have concluded as the Bible has it that the love of God is fulfilled in those that love, that loving people are the children of God, and as such must love God. All the hopes and dreams of my loved ones now gone on before me, I was a part of their hopes and dreams. And while we disappointed each other in this life, while we all failed in many ways of our expectations for one another, love covers a multitude of sins. I take comfort in the thought that when I die I will rejoin my departed loved ones and friends, that all of our hopes and dreams will be fulfilled in a heaven where there will be nothing to interfere with the hopes and dreams we all have that are based on loving one another, and find the love of God fulfilled in us because we love one another.

In this demon-haunted world that seems to be in the grip of Satan, where the good is so impotent against such evil everywhere, I take comfort in my thoughts of heaven, a place where the hopes and dreams of loving people find their fulfillment, and perhaps even the hopes and dreams of God. The universe must have a meaning, and most of us believe our lives have meaning within the context of the creation of the universe; which, to me, means there is a very great plan involved beyond our understanding. But whatever this meaning may be, I think it is built upon the hopes and dreams of loving people, that this is the plan for the hopes and dreams of God.

Faith is, as the Bible has it, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But real faith has those with the hope born of faith looking for “a better country, that is an heavenly” and live their lives accordingly; especially in the love we have for one another that is a testimony to the world that we are the children of God. And this does not depend on any system of religion or philosophy; it does not depend on anything but love.